


I Cannot Choose You

by EthelPhantom



Series: Ethel's Constagami/DamiGami December 2020 [4]
Category: Constantine (TV), DCU, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: All hurt no comfort, Angst, Angst and Feels, Apologies, Betrayal, Bisexual Kagami Tsurugi, Choices, Constagami December, Denial of Feelings, F/F, F/M, Feelings, Feelings Realization, Kidnapping, MariBat, Moral Dilemmas, Sacrifice, Ultimate Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27884941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EthelPhantom/pseuds/EthelPhantom
Summary: Constagami/DamiGami December, day 4: ChoiceWhat is one supposed to do when they must make the ultimate choice and sacrifice someone to save two others?
Relationships: Donna Troy/Kagami Tsurugi, John Constantine/Kagami Tsurugi
Series: Ethel's Constagami/DamiGami December 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2035531
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	I Cannot Choose You

Kagami woke up disoriented. Her head was thumping, and everything hurt, and lights were probably the most terrible thing she could think of currently. The lights, which were  _ everywhere,  _ and she absolutely despised it. It was as if someone had hit her in the head with far too much force. She was also pretty certain this was going to lead to head trauma. How fun. She had _definitely_ missed that feeling, yes, because who wouldn't enjoy some head trauma and lasting consequences?

There were voices speaking all around her. She couldn’t make sense of any of them though, and the best she could do was that she could recognise a woman and a man, both angry, and a couple of other people that were calmer. 

Groaning, she sat up and was just about to massage her forehead when she realised her hands were bound. She couldn’t get her hands out, couldn’t move them much, and they were tied behind her back, and oh goodness her arms were going to cramp, weren’t they? That didn't stop her from tugging on whatever was holding them together, and it hurt. It _hurt._ She hated it so much, and it was... well. It wasn't how she was expecting this day to go — wasn't how she had expected that fight to go.

“Well, would you look at that? Our last prisoner woke up!” someone said, clapping their hands, and Kagami glared daggers at the person. Too loud. Too painful. They should silence themselves before Kagami figured out how to free herself and silence them herself. 

They would  _ not  _ enjoy getting silenced by her. 

It took time for her eyes to be able to focus on anything. Finally, though, she managed to make out the forms of people and realised there were two other people tied up, captured. A beautiful woman with long, black hair, and a man with blond hair. 

_ Donna _ .

John. 

_ Was Donna alright? _

“So, Miss. The lives of your partners are at stake here,” the someone told, and Kagami was so close to yelling for the whole noise thing. So what, one of them was near-immortal, the other had gotten out of Hell at least thrice by now. He was an idiot. Of course he was, he was John Constantine.

Then again, neither of them was unkillable. Neither of them was unkillable, and getting killed would no doubt hurt, and she didn’t want them to suffer. She didn’t want the people she cared about to be in pain. 

“You have three options! One, you kill the pretty lady here, and we let you and your man go. Two, you kill that man of yours and we let you and the pretty lady go.”

“...What is the third option?”

“The third option is, you kill yourself and we let both of them go.”

Kagami bit her lip. She hated all of the options. She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t want the other two dead either — neither of them. Her eyes were desperate, terrified, and forlorn as she searched for their gazes, wanted to see them, because no matter what happened, one of them wasn’t walking out of here alive. It would be one of the two of them, or it would be her, and that meant she was going to never see at least one of them ever again. Donna’s eyes found hers easily, and the message in them was clear.  _ It was alright. She wouldn’t blame her no matter what she chose. Kagami should choose what she saw to be the best option. _

Perhaps, perhaps Kagami hated that  _ even more.  _

Taking a deep breath, she stood up, tried to get back on her feet even as her legs were numb and tired, and even as her head felt like it wanted her dead, and even as she was weak and her hands were tied behind her back. At least her hands weren’t bound in chains of iron, not like John’s and Donna’s. The material wasn't cold. It didn't feel like cutting into her skin.

“Very well. Free me,” she huffed, and someone got behind her to untie her. “I shall choose my own life. Release them first. I want to see them free and gone from you before I do this.” 

Their capturers laughed. “Sure thing, little lady,” the biggest one of them said, but just as someone approached John to unlock him, he spoke up. His tone was mildly angered, or so Kagami at least thought, but there was definitely concern in there, too. She couldn’t understand why. There was no reason for that. He wasn't going to die.

“Cut that out, Princess. I’m not good with you giving up your own bloody life for mine. If you do, I’m gonna hunt you down from the deepest depths of Hell and drag you back, screaming and kicking if I must,” he snapped, and Kagami couldn’t help but roll her eyes and sigh.  _ Why must he be like this?  _ It would be far easier he simply let her free herself of her life, thus letting those she cared about walk away, alive and free, and… forget. Yes. Forget. Because that was simply the best choice for everyone, for them to forget about her and leave her memory alone, rotting in the space they were in right now.

“That would mean choosing you to die.”

Even so, it wasn’t like she  _ wanted  _ to die, and now… she was given a choice, a choice to choose someone she had grown to care about over the years to die instead of herself. The thought hurt, like a dagger in her chest, but… She did not want to die, and she wanted to see her love again. She wanted to see the person she truly cared about more than anything again. That was what mattered to her most.

So, she sighed again and looked at John with sorrow in her eyes. Or perhaps it was something else, no one could quite decipher the feeling behind her intense gaze. “...Are you certain?”

A roll of his eyes. “Of fucking course I’m certain. I’m not letting you pick yourself over me, so go ahead and tell them you choose me instead.”

Because he was a moron.  _ And Kagami hated this.  _ She still nodded and turned to their capturers. “Very well, I suppose I will make a change to what I said earlier. I shall choose him to die,” she said, motioning at John. 

Her voice had turned… cold. Apologetic, and sorrowful, yes, but cold, and not in the way someone who had to pick another life to be diminished would be cold and sorrowful. No, it was cold, and freezing, in a way that suggested she may have allowed other people to die before, more than once, and chosen either herself or someone else over them. It was the tone of someone who was used to people dying because of her.

Perhaps she had even taken lives.

_ She had. _

Their capturers gave her a dagger. It was sharp, shining as the light hit it. She had to turn it away from her eyes as the brightness was too much for her. 

“Mmmh… I would never choose my life over someone else’s, especially so if I at the very least pretended to care about them,” she said slowly, pointedly not looking at John. She felt a stab at her heart, felt a stab at her heart for the choice she was about to make, and she— she didn’t know for certain if there were many other things she could have possibly done that would hurt her more. “I find that to be too cruel to them.” 

Eventually, Kagami lifted her gaze from the floor and turned to look at John as she walked slowly towards Donna. “But I suppose… if the said person gives me their permission…” 

At her words, John’s eyes widened. After years and years of being in a relationship, he finally seemed to understand what kind of a person she was, what she was like. For the first time in forever, he seemed to see the person under the façade she preferred to put up instead of letting others in. All because she decided to allow him to see _her_ in their last moments.

The façade which he had fallen in love with, the façade she only let down for few people — Donna, and the youngest brother of a friend of Donna’s. It had taken a while, but Kagami had understood she and the child were quite similar, in the end, and it was enjoyable finding someone who understood her without her having to explicitly explain herself.

And… she had once let her façade fade in front of John, too.

She had wanted to see if he could be trusted with her heart.

It turned out she was too afraid to try again.

Either way, there were very few people she had ever trusted enough to let them fully in, and it seemed John was finally beginning to understand that — or he had known it since the beginning and cared about her regardless. Truthfully, that option was  _ even worse.  _

Kagami didn’t dare to think about it.

“I would never in my life choose to sacrifice her,” Kagami finally said, caressing Donna’s face before gesturing at the chains binding her, impatient, waiting for her to be freed. After a bit of grumbling, she did get out of them, and Kagami took Donna’s wrists in her hands, rubbing them carefully to reduce the cramp and the numb feeling that was sure to come. 

From the corner of her eye, Kagami made sure John was watching them as she pulled Donna down and kissed her.

“What—”

“She,” Kagami began, breaking off the kiss and gesturing at Donna, “is my partner. She is the one I love. Of course I would choose her, any day, any time. This way I shall get to see her once more.”

There’s something in her eyes, but he cannot decipher quite what it is, and neither can Donna. “I apologise for this, John,” she just says, and her voice isn’t necessarily sorrowful — no one is certain, because she knows how to hide and how to mask her feelings, can cover one feeling up with another. “But, I was never going to stay.”

It makes things difficult.

“I was with you merely to understand the type of magic you work with better.”

“You are a heartless bitch.”

_ She isn’t. _

“Thank you.”

_ She will be. _

“I will choose to be able to see the one I genuinely love once more. You are  _ not  _ that person.”   


And Kagami knows, as she walks to John, the dagger held in a tight grip, that her words sting more than the blade will.  _ You are not that person  _ stings more than the blade of the dagger soon buried deep in a chest and twisted in the wound.

As she looks into his eyes, there is something... there is something that stings too much. Something telling her that whatever she is planning, she must choose the other option because this was wrong. This was incorrect, and not the one she would want in long-term. It would be one she was going to regret. And really, how has it taken her this long to _understand,_ this long to see through what she's tried to tell herself for so long? Maybe he isn't _that_ person she mentioned, but... 

She lifts his chin, giving him a crooked smile, and touches his forehead with her own. He can’t really move but spits at her, and she doesn’t fault him for that. It’s understandable. Doesn’t blame him. 

_ “Live.” _

His eyes fly open and widen at her words, at the silent whisper that sounds more like a plea, a request, a prayer, _an apology,_ breathed before he hears the dagger be buried in a chest, in  _ her  _ chest, and she falls backwards, eyes glassed over, and Donna is there watching it all unravel. It seems she understood what would happen. It seems she was expecting it, but it’s clear that no matter what, she still didn’t want Kagami to do it. 

Kagami has always… she’s always had that in her, and he should have expected it, too. He _knows_ she's always had it in her and yet.

In a way, that very last word she told him and the look she gave him was the clearest "I love you," he's ever been told. The most undeniable one, the most painful one, and... Whatever the case, he realises that she has understood the same, and she works as she's always worked. She chooses what she loves over what she doesn't. 

In this case, it was _herself_ that she didn't love, at least not nearly enough to protect herself and stay alive compared to the other two.

One of their capturers comes with a pair of keys behind John, and he struggles in the hold. He can only look at the dead woman in front of her, the woman who took her own life to save the other two, to save  _ him,  _ and Donna whom she apparently truly loved, and it’s terrifying how she would sacrifice herself that easily, and suddenly he no longer knows how many of her words were true. 

He will never find out, either, because she’s dead.

“Hey, quit that. I’m tryna free ya,” the man behind him tells him as he’s freeing him from the chains of iron he’s been fast bound in.

“No! She’s, she’s dead! Let go of me, fucker, I should have been the one—”

“Come on, pretty boy. She made her choice, now respect it.”

Another man raises a brow at him, looking down at John who’s struggling, and Donna who’s ready to fight now that she’s finished grieving (for now), because in the end she’s a soldier just like Kagami is, and just as Kagami knew that there was no place for feelings in a fight, so does Donna. There was no place for feelings in a fight, on the field, because more people could get hurt if a soldier, even one, were to get distracted by feelings they were not supposed to feel in the situation. Those feelings need to be gone over later if ever.

“Dude, that’s gay,” the man says to the one behind John, and it’s only barely that John catches the reply. 

“Flavio. I  _ am  _ gay. I’m dating you.”

It would amuse him. It  _ would  _ if this was not the situation he was in. If he didn’t need to watch Kagami’s blood spread and pool around her, if he couldn’t feel Donna’s sharp glare aimed at him and the people that had caused Kagami’s death. 

Because Kagami is dead, she made her choice, and they are right, and he hates it more than anything right now, hates it more than he hates himself, hates more than he hates the betrayal. 

He only wishes he could have been the one to die so that he would not need to see Kagami’s life bleed out of her in the form of unforgiving crimson red.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it, please do tell me what you thought of the thing! It was something I'd never quite written before.
> 
> Oh, and do join the (newly created) [Constagami server](https://discord.gg/k3MrJUFjjS) on Discord!


End file.
